Real estate agents tell prospective sellers the three most important words in the business are location, location, location. Evidently geography is also very important in surfing — second only to having an ocean — when it comes to ideal wave–catching conditions.

The surfers living near Lunada Bay, Calif., value their real estate so highly — actually it’s a public beach open to all — they use bullying and intimidation to keep nonresident surfers away.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the “Bay Boys,” a group composed of middle–aged white jerks with an inflated sense of proprietorship, have marked the beach there as off limits to outsiders since the mid-1990s.

These cowards know there is anonymity in numbers, so they gang up on nonresidents and throw rocks, vandalize their cars and destroy any possessions left on the beach. Of course it’s all illegal, but it continues because until recently the authorities had a rather unique view of “community policing.”

In 1995 members of the nonresident public protested the beach bullies. “Police responded by checking the protesters’ cars for expired tags and broken headlights before later clearing the entire bluff, citing a bomb threat," reports the Times, crediting the local Easy Reader newspaper. "Two years later, police ordered a television news crew out of the area.”

That’s policing for the community at the expense of everyone else in the state.

Or, as The Guardian newspaper quoted a dispatcher in the Palos Verdes Police Department, “They don’t like anyone who isn’t one of the Bay Boys surfing down there . . . If you feel uncomfortable, you know, then don’t do it.”

Fortunately for surfers who can’t afford to buy one on the million-dollar homes near the beach, Palos Verdes has a new chief of police and either he isn’t a surfer or he’s not as possessive of the waves as the previous chief.

Jeff Kepley intends to apply the rule of law to the sandy parts of the community, too. “I think it’s very important to get the word out as aggressively and enthusiastically as we can that the status quo is going to be mixed up around here.”

He even hopes to make the first arrest of one of the Bay Boys in living memory.

I wish Kepley the best of luck, but I’m not optimistic.

Palos Verdes is run by a city council that voted to remove a surveillance camera aimed at the beach a decade ago after some of the men who prefer to act like delinquents objected.

It’s going to take a lot to overcome that institutional territoriality.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan. He is president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation and chairman of the League of American Voters. Mike is an in-demand speaker with Premiere. Read more reports from Michael Reagan — Go Here Now.